The comune is new, the name is very old: Contà comes from contado, comitatus, because between the twelfth and the fourteenth century this slice of the lower Val di Non was a jurisdiction of its own, that of the counts of Flavon, a family of German origin enfeoffed by the prince-bishops of Trento. In the eighties of the thirteenth century the counts of Tyrol beat them and took castle and jurisdiction, which from then on remained a Tyrolean enclave inside the borders of the prince-bishopric. From 1334 came the Spaur, and they stayed almost five hundred years: theirs are the two palaces that bear that name at Flavon and at Terres, built in the seventeenth century after the old castle was abandoned. The three villages — Flavon, the seat of the jurisdiction, Cunevo and Terres — each had their own regole, their own regolani and their own mayor, but never put a charter of rule in writing, a rather rare thing: in 1758 the Tyrolean captain Giuseppe Gerolamo Ceschi called on them to do it, and nothing came of it.
What they have always done instead, without needing to write it down, is hold the mountain together. The pastures, the alpine dairies and the fine woods of the Alpe Flavona, at the head of the Val di Tovel, have been managed undivided by the three communities from time immemorial, and still are today, even though the alp administratively lies in another comune: for these mountain economies it was the most precious resource. That habit explains the rest. In the nineteenth century, once the seigniorial jurisdictions were abolished, the three villages became three separate comuni; in 1928 fascism merged them by decree; after the war they went back to being separate, while still managing the alp together and staying in a single fruit-growers' consortium; and on the first of January 2016, after a referendum, they chose to become a single comune again, calling it Contà. Above the villages runs the Margherita path, four flat kilometres inside a pine wood, along a channel dug in the nineteenth century to bring here the water of the Val di Tovel.
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📅 Every year, on 3 May
On 3 May Contà, a municipality of 1,383 inhabitants in the province of Trento, celebrates its patrons Saints Philip and James, to whom one of the town's churches is dedicated.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Contà, but an easy day trip away.
